for those of you who have SERIES....

[sammykay]

Just wondering for those of you who sell a series, do you sell them separate? Or do you put them in a bundle for a cheaper price?  And if you put them in a bundle, do you seem to notice you sell them better as a bundle?

I was thinking about putting my series (when all 5 are done) into one bundle for $4.99.  But I was just wondering if it was even worth it?  I have each one up for $2.99

This month is terrible for sales

[Danielle Kazemi]

This month is horrible for sales. Stupid February... As for bundling them, that is tricky. How long are they? A bunch of novelettes or even novellas I could see potentially bundling but if they are 100k ones, it would not make sense. Just ride it out. Maybe run a promo of the first book somewhere.

[Wren Emerson]

I have a couple of collections under my pen name and I find that with both of them, the sales are significantly less on them than the individual title. I'd still recommend bundles though because it gives you a bigger backlist and some people do prefer to buy them all at once.

[sammykay]

This month is horrible for sales. Stupid February... As for bundling them, that is tricky. How long are they? A bunch of novelettes or even novellas I could see potentially bundling but if they are 100k ones, it would not make sense. Just ride it out. Maybe run a promo of the first book somewhere.

they are about 20,000 - 25,000 words per book.  I used up all of my promo days at the beginning of jan for the first book and then I did promos on just the second and third, which increased sales for the first book, but I didn't want to try any promos through KDP for a month.  I am giving away 100 free ebook copies at Library Thing which ends this coming friday and I'm giving away 2 paperbacks through goodreads every two weeks.  So I hope that helps with sales too

[sammykay]

I have a couple of collections under my pen name and I find that with both of them, the sales are significantly less on them than the individual title. I'd still recommend bundles though because it gives you a bigger backlist and some people do prefer to buy them all at once.

  I was just hoping that sales on the individual books wouldn't drop if I did a bundle too.  But not everyone will know that I have them in a bundle too

[kookoo88]

I have an omnibus of my trilogy.  It sells very well. I also have a collection of my short stories that does well.  I think it's an excellent idea to give the reader as many options as possible.

[robertduperre]

What I plan on doing is bundling the 4 books in my series (after the last one is put out in July) and re-releasing it in January as a "new release", complete with a new cover, extras that aren't in the four books separately, such as samples of the original manuscript, short stories that deal with the plot, a foreword, new illustrations, etc. And as for pricing, since the books are 2.99, 2.99, 3.95, and 4.95 respectively, I'll be pricing it at 9.99.  Sticking to @70% of the total sticker value of the individual books strikes me as a decent way to go.  But there does need to be some time between the last book and the omnibus--6 months seems appropriate, since that's around the time that books tend to lose steam (from my personal experience).

Just my 2¢.  Certainly not an expert on this sort of thing.

[MaryMcDonald]

Just wondering for those of you who sell a series, do you sell them separate? Or do you put them in a bundle for a cheaper price?  And if you put them in a bundle, do you seem to notice you sell them better as a bundle?

I was thinking about putting my series (when all 5 are done) into one bundle for $4.99.  But I was just wondering if it was even worth it?  I have each one up for $2.99

This month is terrible for sales

I only have two of my series out so far (third coming very soon!) but I did put the first two in a duobook. I don't sell many of them, but I also don't advertise it at all. I might pull the duobook when third comes out. I'm not sure I'll do a book with all three or not. Right now all my books are in Select, but if I did a triplebook, I wouldn't want it going in there and not sure I can do that per the terms of the contract.

[robertduperre]

@Mary:

I'm not always sure how to read lawyer-speak, but I think the first stipulation from the KDP guidelines answers that--

1 Exclusivity. When you include a Digital Book in KDP Select, you give us the exclusive right to sell and distribute your Digital Book in digital format while your book is in KDP Select. During this period of exclusivity, you cannot sell or distribute, or give anyone else the right to sell or distribute, your Digital Book (or content that is reasonably likely to compete commercially with your Digital Book, diminish its value, or be confused with it), in digital format in any territory where you have rights.

[valeriec80]

Yes, bundle them (but wait until they are out of select or enroll the bundle in select).

But if you have five books that are each selling for $2.99, for heaven's sake, price the bundle higher than $4.99.

The way I think a lot of people do it is to buy your first book. If they like it, they might buy the bundle. So figure out how much it would cost to buy the other books in your series and price the bundle just slightly less than that, so people feel like they're getting a little deal by buying them all together. You don't want the price of your bundle to completely cannibalize the sales of your other books.

[S.A. Mulraney]

When my trilogy is complete, I'll definitely put it into an omnibus. As each will be priced at $2.99, I'll probably price the set at 5.99. I think a discount of 33% is appropriate for a compilation...and $6 won't be too much to ask for what will essentially be 210,000+ words.

[Doomed Muse]

I'm writing a novella series right now and plan to bundle them as well.  The individual novellas sell at 2.99, so I'm thinking the bundles of five will be 8.99 for the reason Valerie pointed out. I could price them at 9.99 and still have it be a deal over buying even 4 of the novellas, but I think 8.99 will look like more a deal and give me a nice enough royalty. We'll see. I might price one or two bundles at 8.99 and a tester one at 9.99 and see what works best. 

But definitely bundle them. Why not offer multiple options for readers?

[William Woodall]

I sell the three books in my "Last Werewolf Hunter" series separately for the Kindle, and I sell them bundled together in the print edition.  I do it that way partly to save customers money if they happen to want the print version, and also because I remember how much I hate it when I read one book in a series and then can't find the sequels when I want them.  That's not so much of an issue with the Kindle, but it definitely is with print books (like if a library only has one book of the three and the other two can't be found anywhere.  Grrr!)

It seems to work for me this way, although the print book turned out to be pretty long. . . about 170K words.

[Andrew Ashling]

I sell the three volumes of Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse separately.
I'm working on a second trilogy. When that is finished, hopefully by the end of the year, I may bundle the first one.
As for now, I just bumped up the price of the first trilogy from $2.99 to $3.99 (Yep, in February — I'm a marketing genius ). The wordcount is 122k, 137k and 139k. A total of 399k.